


The Ravenstag And His Boy

by TheSilverQueen



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Regency, Inspired by Princess Mononoke, M/M, Minor Alana Bloom/Margot Verger, Ravenstag, Talking Animals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-12 03:49:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9054037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSilverQueen/pseuds/TheSilverQueen
Summary: In order to ascend to the throne, Will Graham has to prove that he can win the approval and support of the old gods of the forest. So of course he sets his heart on one of the most ancient gods of all: the Ravenstag.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Duomi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duomi/gifts).



> This is my gift for the wonderful [cnwarforged](http://cnwarforged.tumblr.com/) (who also goes by [Duomi on AO3](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Duomi/pseuds/Duomi)) in the Fannibals Secret Exchange!!! They asked for either cute or dark and I sort of . . . went in the middle? Anyways, I hope you enjoy it and have a fantastic holiday, cnwarforged!
> 
> For this, I drew inspiration from Princess Mononoke (because I LOVE Studio Ghibli) and the title came from "The Horse and His Boy" because Chronicles of Narnia was a big thing during my childhood too.

It’s a tradition, they tell the boy. A very old, very respected, very honorable tradition, to send the possible contenders for the throne into the forest to choose their guardian animals – assuming, of course, that they’re not one of the ones judged too weak by the old gods of the forest and summarily eaten instead.

The boy says dryly, “To what? Get undesirable princes murdered in creepy forests?”

The boy is quickly ushered into the baths to be prepared.

They dress the boy in bright white pants and a bright white tunic. He is given no weapons and washed clean by purified water and anointed with traditional scents of pine and nectar. He will have to find his own shelter, hunt his own food, and somehow manage to prove himself worthy of an animal guardian along with not getting eaten by another animal or falling prey to natural calamities like starvation, hypothermia, or rock slides. He is given a time limit of three months – the standard mourning period for the old king – and if he fails to emerge within that time, he will be disqualified, considered dead, and another’s trial will begin.

“So exciting,” the boy says from where so many strangers’ hands are scrubbing every inch of him clean. 

When they stand him upon the ceremonial altar and crown him in purple tulips entwined with blossoms of sweet William. It is the symbol to the old gods that he is their candidate for judgment.

Many murmur in surprise and doubt. This boy is very young, only just come into his majority, and now, washed of all the dirt and stripped of the rugged clothes that gave him authority and hid his soft features, he looks more akin to the babes of the villages than anyone who might wear a crown and command their armies. He doesn’t look like he could even craft a fire, much less hunt down and win the loyalty of one of the old gods to stand as his animal guardian.

The way the boy’s shoulders stiffen leaves in no doubt that he can hear those doubts. Still, he makes no scathing remarks as he is crowned and then blindfolded. 

The boy is guided, barefoot and garbed in white and crowned in purple, to the edge of the forest. They push him a few steps in and then the crowd follows the lead of the priests and advisors to kneel in the dirt and bow to the old gods of the forest, who roamed the world long before any human and now grace the forest with their protection and presence.

When they rise, the boy is gone.

* * *

The first creature the boy sees once he has discarded the blindfold and turned it into wrappings for his feet is a fox, wily and clever and perched on an old tree root. Its tail is curled carefully around its paws and it regards him with an air of superiority. 

It is one of the old gods. The boy would know from the size alone, for this fox is big enough to swallow his head whole, but the minute the fox opens its mouth there is no question.

“So you are the new princeling,” says the fox. 

The boy bows, because showing rudeness to an old god is a really quick way to die a really slow death.

When he rises, the fox licks its chops and then says, “You are not mine to guard, I’m afraid. But I might offer you some advice, if you are willing to listen.”

“What advice?”

“You will walk a long and tangled path,” predicts the fox. “We are destined to be your advisors and protectors, not your rulers. Whosoever among us you choose to make your guardian, you must listen to them. But balance always their words with your own. You may find they are not quite so aligned as you think.”

“Thank you,” the boy says.

The fox stands and then hops off the tree root. When the boy rounds the tree, the fox is gone.

He shrugs and continues.

The next creature the boy runs into is a butterfly. It is a rainbow of colors, flickering from green to red to blue to yellow to white to pink with every flick of wings larger than the boy’s eyes. It does a quick circle around him and then flies off. 

The boy shrugs and continues.

The next creature the boy runs into a squirrel. It is not one of the old gods, and it lets out a squeak and goes fleeing into the brush the second it catches sight of the boy, who laughs and then gives chase just for the fun of it. He pursues the squirrel over a hill, down a stream, and then finally up in a tree so high the boy eventually gives up and shimmies back down the trunk, wheezing and red-faced in pleasure. 

He is so busy wheezing, in fact, that he does not notice the gold eyes watching in the distance.

After that, the boy gives up his search for the first day. He collects brush and wood from the forest for a fire, careful to take only that which has been discarded onto the forest floor so as not to annoy or offend the old gods, and then sets out in search of a cave. There is one that serves his purpose, with a tiny opening he can squeeze through but an open and airy inside where he can make his fire and settle himself in sleep. Luckily there are several berry bushes nearby, and between that and the stream, the boy settles down to sleep and dreams of branches and feathers.

The next day is a revolving door of rejections.

An elephant looks him up and down and then says, “You are not mine to guard.”

A skunk does a complete about-face and walks away, saying, “You are not mine to guard.”

A gazelle attempts to run him down. A leopard attempts to slash his chest wide open. A snake attempts to strangle him and swallow him whole.

The boy fights off each and every attempt, and each time the guardian eventually sits back, shakes its fur or rattles it tail or blinks its large eyes before saying, “You have passed, but you are not mine to guard.”

On the third day, the boy abandons his cave and sets off further into the forest. The deeper into the forest, the smaller the trails before until they taper off altogether, and the animal guardians grow even larger. The boy sees a wolf the size of a house with two tails and a boar with four tusks and an eagle with a wingspan bigger than a carriage. The wolf merely opens one eye, yawns, and dismisses him. The boar laughs and then walks past. The eagle attempts to peck his liver out.

Each time, he is told, over and over again, “You are not mine to guard.”

On the fourth day, the boy enters the next ring of the forest. It is the true domain of the old gods, where trees have grown since the dawn of creation and waters that have never felt the touch of man still run. Here, the animal guardians are even more dangerous. 

A flying bison nearly squishes him when it lands. A catdeer flees so fast that the boy hardly has the time to register its presence before it’s out of sight. A polar bear dog gives him a vicious scrape across his back. And a spider as big as a mountain nearly wraps him up in its voluminous webs, although it also is the only guardian willing to speak to him.

“How will I know?” asks the boy, washing away the last of the stands of the spider’s web.

The spider clicks its legs. “The guardian will choose you and you will choose the guardian,” says the spider. “You have already been judged worthy by many here; we can all see it on your skin that you have fought and survived. Your will is strong. You will know.”

The boy sighs, but after that the spider refuses to speak any further.

He does not lose hope, though. Mostly because that night he takes to the trees to sleep, because it is far safer up there than to nest on the ground and possibly be trampled or swallowed by any number of creatures that roam the forest at night. And this turns out to be his break, for when he wakes in the middle of the night to the sound of soft steps, he sees something.

It is a fearsome creature, with shoulders that would dwarf the boy’s head, not to mention a fearsome crown of sharp antlers. Its breath steams in the cold night, but for all its size it barely makes a noise as it emerges from the darkness.

The boy leans over, just a little, to get a closer look.

And falls out of the tree.

He lands with a thump, stunned, on the ground. To his surprise, though, the great beast does not attempt to either flee or kill him. It merely snorts in amusement and comes closer, and through eyes watering with pain, the boy seems the fearsome visage of a ravenstag, with feathers black as a pitch and fur as dark as night and eyes as gold as the sun. And just as the spider had said, the boy _knows_ , as surely as he knows that the sun rises with day.

This is his guardian.

“You’re mine,” says the boy to the ravenstag.

The ravenstag cocks its proud head, and its antlers cast terrifying shadows in the distance. “Am I?”

“Yes. And you know it. You’ve been following me.”

The ravenstag laughs. “Clever boy. But first you must catch me, little one.”

The boy blinks, and the ravenstag rears onto its hind legs, bellowing so loudly that the trees shed some leaves in appeasement and fright. It’s so loud that the boy is forced to halt and cover his eyes from the pain, and when he looks up again, the ravenstag is far in the distance. It stops only briefly, eyes bright with challenge, before it vanishes from his sight altogether.

“I will,” proclaims the boy.

* * *

The boy spends most of the next few days planning and preparing and gathering. He works long into the night and rises early each morning, stopping only to catch a few hours of sleep high in the trees. The ravenstag is old and clever and proud; if the boy does not do his part just right, the ravenstag will either refuse him or kill him outright, jut for the sheer pleasure of it. After all, what is one human king’s life to one such as the ravenstag?

The boy begs silk from the spider and claws from the leopard and caches of flowers and dewdrops from the fox. He is polite and determined, and after some persuasion they agree.

Every night, as he sleeps, the ravenstag returns, although it never stays for long.

And one night, when the trap is ready, the ravenstag lingers just one heartbeat too long, one footstep too far over the small offering of fruits and meats at the base of the boy’s tree.

The net of spider silk hurtles down, settled deep into the earth by claws, and the ravenstag is trapped.

The boy shimmies down the tree and stands proud before the snorting, pawing figure.

“I caught you,” says the boy.

The ravenstag bows its head. “So you did, clever boy. And now what?”

The boy hesitates. It was the one thing the priests had not told the boy, not even a whisper – how to forge the bond that would tie his animal guardian to him. He had thought, perhaps, that he would learn from the creatures, but the ravenstag looks at him with clear, deep eyes and he knows that he will not get any help from that corner.

“What do you want?” asks the boy.

“Ah,” says the ravenstag, “perhaps that was not the wisest question to ask. Are you sure that is what you wish to begin with, little one?”

“Why not?”

“Because I want all of you,” the ravenstag answers. “I want your scent and I want your blood and I want your heart, ripped straight from your chest. I would devour every inch of you and carry your soul within me, forever mine. I would take everything you have to offer and keep it as long as I would live.”

“I am to be king.”

“What are human lifespans to one such as me?” the ravenstag scoffs. “With me you would live until the sun burns out.”

“But I have a duty to my people.” It is weak-sounding, even to the boy.

“Cut me free, my sweet,” implores the ravenstag. “Cut me free, and I will give you all of the world and time and freedom you could ever want. I will give you _everything_.”

For one second, the boy’s hand twitches forward.

Then the boy thinks of the people who had thrown flowers at his feet and cried when he was pushed into the forest and danced with joy at the death of the old king. The boy shakes his head. He will be king and he will right the wrongs of those who came before him. And he will only do it with the ravenstag at his side, not the other way around.

“No,” says the boy.

The ravenstag nods. “Then, little one, I need your blood.”

The boy is just in the middle of cutting his hand open when they are interrupted by a raucous party of hunters, dressed elaborately in furs and brandishing metal human-made weapons. To add insult to injury, they ride panting, wheezing horses and drape wolf skins over their shoulders. Such things are forbidden in the forest of the old gods. 

One man whistles at the sight of the ravenstag, trapped in place by a net. “Well, that’s not something you see every day. I think we’ll eat well tonight, boys.”

The boy draws his knife. It is rock, carved painstaking into a sharp point and tied with twine around a wooden stick. Not as deadly as the rifles the hunters carry, but his is approved by the old gods. 

“This one is mine,” the boy tells them.

“You’re just a boy.”

The boy responds by darting up and dragging one of the hunters from his horse, slitting his throat so quickly he dies in a gurgle. 

Most of the men startle, but one man is made of stronger stuff. Without hesitation, he loads his rifle and shoots the boy right in the stomach. The boy falls with a cry, and the ravenstag bellows in rage but despite its struggles, the boy has devised the net too well; the ravenstag can only watch as the boy gasps and bleeds on the ancient floor.

Still, the boy is not a fool. As the light leaves his eyes, he wipes his blood across the silk of the net.

His last sight is of the ravenstag breaking free, rage turning its eyes red as blood.

* * *

The boy wakes in fits and starts.

He sees men screaming and fleeing, and antlers coated in blood that runs down to the old forest.

He sees the ravenstag, nuzzling at the wound in his stomach.

He hears a voice say, “This will hurt. The bullet did not go all the way through. I must remove it.”

He screams as the ravenstag tears a new line of burning pain into his stomach, and after that he recalls nothing else.

* * *

When the boy wakes again, he is lying in a nest of blankets and pillows. He is naked but for a clean line of bandages wrapped around his middle, but he feels no fear or shame, for around him curves the bulk of the ravenstag.

“You saved me,” says the boy.

The ravenstag nuzzles his shoulder, affection and pride in its eyes. “You are mine, little one. Death will not have you before I am ready.”

“I do have a name, you know.”

“I know.”

The boy sighs and rolls onto his side. The ravenstag’s fur is intermixed with feathers, but it feels surprisingly soft against his skin regardless. Of course, it is not only this animal skin the boy remembers as he strokes the ravenstag’s pelt.

“You were human-shaped,” the boy realizes. “You carried me. In your arms.”

“You were too weak to ride me after I had ripped open your wound to remove the bullet. I had to improvise.”

“Does that make me in your debt?” The boy’s tone is curious, nothing else. He has already bound their lives together far more than most people will ever understand or experience. He has no fear of this creature anymore.

“Yes,” the ravenstag says, and nothing else. 

“My name is Will.”

“And I am Hannibal.”

* * *

When Mason Verger visits, he is overcome with glee. This kingdom is rich in gold and jewels, and it will make a fitting addition to the ones he has already conquered. His men are in place; all he needs in an audience with the king.

It’s not . . . quite what he was expecting.

There is no throne, for one. Just a raised dais of three steps, and upon that sits someone who looks more like a boy than a king. He has a head full of curls crowned by a simple gold circlet adorned with feathers and antlers, and his bright blue eyes are very young. He even dresses like a boy, in simple plain colors and clothing. The only thing that marks him as remotely interesting is the enormous creature curled at his back.

Mason has heard rumors before, but now he swallows as he tilts his back to comprehend the sheer size and majesty of this ravenstag, even sitting as it is with legs folded and head on the ground beside the side of the boy.

“Lord Verger,” says the boy-king. “I’ve heard some interesting things about you.”

“All good things, I hope?”

“Depends who I ask.”

Mason laughs before he can stop himself. This boy will be so easy, he tells himself, as long as he takes care of one simple detail. “Uh, I hope I’m not offensive, but I requested a _private_ audience with you, Your Majesty,” he says hopefully. “May your . . . pet be dismissed?”

The creature’s head comes right up, and its eyes are so piercing he can’t maintain contact for more than a few seconds.

The boy-king smirks, and the way he tangles a hand in the creature’s neck speaks volumes. “Hannibal is not my ravenstag. And besides, Hannibal does whatever he wishes. If you want him to leave, you may ask him yourself.”

Mason chooses not to. He’s heard just exactly how vicious the old gods can be towards those they think are offensive. 

The ravenstag snorts a laugh and relaxes, tail flickering over to land around the boy’s other wrist.

But it’s okay, for at that moment his advisor steps up and whispers the magic words, the words Mason has been waiting for and working towards for seven years, ever since his rat of a sister had fled north to the sanctuary of the Lady Bloom – a kingdom Mason cannot reach without first going through this boy-king’s one.

Mason draws his sword, and immediately his soldiers fall upon the dais.

It’s of no use.

In one long second, the ravenstag stands, shakes itself, and blurs into motion. One moment, it’s undoubtedly an animal, antlers tossing some poor soldier into the air; another moment, it’s a fearsome half-human, half-animal, with long claws that gut another man; and then it’s suddenly a man, fierce and unshakeable in his nudity, tearing out yet another soldier’s throat with his sharp teeth. 

Within five seconds, every single soldier is dead.

“And that,” remarks the boy wryly, “is exactly what Queen Margot warned us might happen.”

Mason stammers and stutters as more soldiers arrive to clasp him in chains. He had spent so long researching this kingdom’s weaknesses . . . “But – but _how_?” he demands, fighting as he’s dragged away.

The ravenstag-man laughs and pads back to the boy, one proud and bloodied hand curving so lovingly around the boy-king’s waist.

“Because, Mason Verger,” says the ravenstag, voice as terrifying as his visage, “you made one fatal mistake. I am not Will’s ravenstag. Will is my boy-king. And he will be mine until the end of time. You are but a speck of dirt to one such as me; I would not surrender my treasure to you for such petty concerns.”

* * *

“You really messed with his head,” Will says drowsily from his nest of blankets.

Hannibal pauses from where he is wiping away the blood of lesser pigs. He unfortunately couldn’t eat them as he was accustomed too, but Will did consent to letting him burn them in the old rites, so he will get some of what he is owed, at least. Mason Verger, they had already agreed, will be left to the judgment and vengeance of Queen Margot, who has already found support and love in arms of the Lady Alana, who is as vicious as any of the new gods can be.

“He tried to take you,” Hannibal says simply.

“That’s what makes it even funnier.”

Hannibal rises and presses one human-shaped hand to the long smile carved into the skin of Will’s stomach. It healed under Hannibal’s urging, but the scar remains where he pulled the bullet from his boy and he will not heal that. Will tolerates the touch; he has grown used to it.

“You,” Hannibal tells him, “are mine. Now and always. That was our deal.”

“I know,” Will says.

“Good.”

With that, they slept, the ravenstag and his boy-king, and they ruled for many, many years until at last the boy-king was no longer a boy at all, and he handed down the crown to the next heir to be sent into the forest. That day, the ravenstag carried Will away on his proud back in the depths of the forest of the old gods, and no one ever saw either again.

FINIS

**Author's Note:**

> HAPPY HOLIDAYS, EVERYONE!!! Be merry and party like Hannibal & Will. Or Bedelia, if you prefer the company of good wine over lots of people. Either works :D
> 
> Also don't forget to check out the other works and fanart that are coming out for the Secret Fannibals Exchange by following [ their tumblr](http://fannibals-buffet.tumblr.com/) because a lot more goodies are coming out this week.
> 
> Lastly, if you wanna come say hi, leave a comment below or come flail with me on [tumblr](http://thesilverqueenlady.tumblr.com).


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